Boeing’s stock price fell sharply on Monday, in the first trading session after part of the fuselage of one of its 737 MAX 9 planes exploded on an Alaska Airlines flight on Friday evening.
Boeing shares fell about 8 percent, and Spirit AeroSystems, which made the door seal that was torn from the plane, saw its shares fall about 11 percent by the end of the day Monday.
An Alaska Airlines flight departing from Portland, Oregon, lost a mid-cabin door seal in mid-air, exposing passengers to high winds and forcing them to make an emergency landing. None of the 171 passengers and six crew members on board the plane were seriously injured.
The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered US airlines to ground some Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft with a similar configuration to those used by Alaska. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident.
United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, the two most frequent users of the Max 9, canceled more than 350 flights Monday, representing 8 percent of United’s schedule and 20 percent of Alaska’s schedule, according to FlightAware. United shares rose about 2.8 percent on Monday, while Alaska shares fell 0.2 percent, reversing some of the losses incurred earlier in the day.
Other airlines that have Max 9 aircraft in their fleets are located outside the United States, such as Copa Airlines Panama, Turkish Airlines and Icelandic Airlines. These aircraft may not be subject to the same regulatory procedure. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency announced Monday that Max 9 planes operating in Europe were not grounded because they were of a different configuration than the Alaska Airlines plane that had to make an emergency landing.
Boeing said early Monday morning that it had issued instructions on how airlines should conduct inspections of the plane.
Spirit AeroSystems said in a statement Monday that it is “a committed partner with Boeing on the 737 program, and we continue to work with them on this.”
Another version of the Max, the 737 Max 8, was involved in two accidents that killed hundreds of people in 2018 and 2019, leading to its grounding around the world. Last month, Boeing urged airlines to inspect more than 1,300 delivered Max jets for a possible loose screw in the rudder control system.
While investors were spooked, few analysts expected the financial damage to Boeing and others to continue, based on what they saw from regulators and companies after the Alaska Airlines incident.
Analysts at Barclays Bank indicated that grounding the planes would have only a “minor financial impact” because the Max 9 fleet was relatively modest, at 215 aircraft, of which 144 were operating in the United States.
Analysts noted that the MAX 9 represents only 2 percent of Boeing’s backlog of orders. Alaska has 27 Max 9 planes on order, and United has seven.
Analysts at Williams Blair said the decline in Boeing shares was a buying opportunity. “Although the Alaska Airlines door seal incident was terrifying, we do not believe it will have a significant financial impact, unless another incident occurs after the aircraft returns to service,” they wrote.
A Morningstar research report agreed that the impact would not be “material,” but noted that “the dramatic nature of the disruption will have the effect of once again calling into question Boeing’s product governance by customers, regulators, and the general public.”
Mark Walker contributed reporting.
